


I am Dating Stiles Stilinski, Please Send Help

by Harlanhardway (Target44)



Series: Stiles Stilinski's Baadasssss Song [4]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Derek Hale is a Mess, Established Relationship, Fluff, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, POV Derek, Pining Derek Hale, Post-Season/Series 06, Stiles Stilinski is a Mess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-15
Updated: 2018-06-15
Packaged: 2019-05-23 15:18:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14936802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Target44/pseuds/Harlanhardway
Summary: Stiles goes to college on the other side of the country.  Derek and Stiles decide to make it work and go the distance anyways.  Skype sucks.  Derek maybe has a minor freak-out.  Good thing Stiles is just as much of a mess as he is.





	I am Dating Stiles Stilinski, Please Send Help

**Author's Note:**

> Like all the other fics in this series, this can be read as a one-shot. Not a ton happens, but, you know, I felt like writing it so here it is.

Derek frowned at his computer screen.  He tried not to.  Possessive behavior was not healthy.  He was not a slave to his instincts.  He could control himself.  They were taking it slow.  He was taking it slow.  
  
It was Derek who had insisted that they take it slow.  Stiles hadn't pushed, but they'd slept in the same bed plenty of times and Derek would have had to be dead not to notice Stiles waking up every morning hard enough to pound nails.  But they'd talked about it and Derek had a lot of baggage.  All kinds of baggage: werewolf baggage, abandonment baggage, sexual baggage, trust baggage, intimacy baggage, you name, Derek had the baggage.  This probably should have left Derek cold and closed off, and that was definitely the aura he tried to project, but he knew himself well enough to realize that, when it came to relationships, he had the self-preservation instincts of a blind lemming.  
  
Derek was already pretty attached, had been, even before they started dating, and if they fucked, he was pretty sure he'd end up unloading all of that baggage all over Stiles.  (Regrettably, this was the exact phasing he had chosen to use when explaining the situation to Stiles, a fact which he had yet to live down.)  Stiles, obvious chastity jokes aside, had been surprisingly understanding.  
  
Asking someone to be exclusive when you're not actually having sex yet hadn't been easy and Derek wouldn't pretend he hadn't half-expected Stiles to come back from George Washington University over Christmas break smelling like someone else's come.  But Stiles hadn't and if Derek had been at all a normal person, they probably would have had sex then.  Unfortunately, Derek was not a normal person and had built the whole thing up in his brain as feeling too much like a test and as sex should be its own end, a mutual decision, not a reward, Stiles had gone back to school with their relationship still hovering somewhere between second and third base.  
  
Now it was spring and they hadn't seen each other in months and two days ago Scott had shown up at a pack meeting wearing one of Stiles' old sweatshirts and Derek had maybe cracked, just a little bit.  
  
Stiles smiled up at him from the computer screen.  They Skyped regularly and today Stiles looked no different than he normally did.  Derek wasn't sure if he should take that as a good sign or a bad one.  Maybe it meant nothing.  Maybe the evidence of his creepy and needy freak-out had been lost in the mail.  Maybe some benevolent mail carrier had sensed the general reek of desperation coming off the package and thrown it away out of pity.  
  
Stiles smirked, rising an eyebrow.  "How's your week been, Babe?"  
  
Derek's stomach sank.  He had payed for same-day delivery, package insurance, and signature confirmation upon delivery.  If he hadn't gotten an email notification the evening before, that smirk alone would have told him.  Derek knew for a fact that Stiles was well-aware of exactly how his week had gone.  
  
He stared in frustration at his computer screen, trying not to frown.  Other than the smile, he couldn't tell how Stiles was taking it.  There was nothing to smell and Derek could barely make out Stiles' breathing over all the white-noise picked up by his microphone.  Distinguishing a heartbeat was a lost cause.  It made him anxious.  
  
"Could have been better."  
  
Stiles continued to smile, playing with the collar of his sweatshirt.  "That's too bad.  Maybe it's the weather.  I hear you guys had an unexpected cold snap, have you not been able to run as much?  It's been warm here, the humidity's probably gonna kill me.  I bought one of those de-humidifiers, but it's so loud, I have to turn it off at night and then I just sweat like a pig."  
  
Derek nodded.  Why were they talking about the weather?  
  
"I'm going through undershirts like crazy, I don't know how I'm going to survive until summer, I mean look at this."  He reached down to the hem of his sweatshirt and stripped it off in one move.  Or tried to.  It got stuck around his head and Stiles struggled with it for a second while Derek stared.  
  
He was wearing the shirt.  
  
Head finally popping free, Stiles when back to smiling into the camera, his hair sticking up, freshly rumpled.  "See, barely ten AM and I've already pitted the thing out."  He lifted one arm demonstrably, as if Derek had somehow managed to not notice.  
  
As if Derek's face wasn't five inches from his computer screen, tracing the line of Stile's collar bones where they disappeared under the loose collar.  
  
It was definitely Derek's shirt.  The one he had worked out in for five hours and then jerked off on, sealed in a plastic bag and had express delivered to Stiles' apartment on the other side of the country.  Like a creep.  Because he missed him and had baggage and zero self-control and was unable to express himself like a normal person.  But Stiles was wearing it anyways.  He had put it on and sweated into it and was showing it to Derek.  
  
And Derek couldn't smell anything.  
  
He knew it smelled like them.  He knew it.  He could see his own come stain on the front and Stiles was wearing it.  It was sticking to him.  Maybe he had slept in it; maybe he had rolled around in for hours.  If he were there, Derek would be able to tell just from the smell.  But he wasn't, so he couldn't.  His nostrils flared and he leaned in even closer.  He could feel is eyes heat up.  Nothing.  Nothing.  It smelled like nothing but his shitty apartment and his own shitty clothes, the vague whiff of protein powder and Gatorade coming from the general direction of the kitchen, the scuzz of dirty laundry wafting off his laundry pile and the lingering smell of pizza from the pack meeting the day before yesterday and NOT like STILES AT ALL.  
  
The casing of his laptop screen started to crack and the picture warped a tiny bit with the press of his fingers and it still didn't smell like Stiles.  
  
"DEREK!  DEREK, CHILL OUT!  DUDE, IT'S FINE.  CHILL THE FUCK OUT!"  
  
Derek became dimly aware of shouting coming from the speakers.  He closed his eyes and breathed out very slowly, letting go of the laptop screen.  
  
Shit.  So much for not coming off as any more off a creepy possessive jackass than necessary.  
  
There was some rustling on the other end of the Skype connection and when Derek opened his eyes again, Stiles was back to wearing the sweatshirt.  Was he still wearing the t-shirt underneath?  Maybe he had taken it off.  He'd probably taken it off.  Of course he had, Stiles was definitely weirded out.  Derek had acted like a complete creep and weirded him out.  
  
Derek started breathing heavily again.  
  
"Babe.  Chill.  I'm still wearing the shirt."  Stiles pulled put the hem of his sweatshirt to show the t-shirt underneath.  "Look at me, I'm not freaked out.  It's fine.  Hey!  Derek, look over here, okay?  Chill."  
  
Derek took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then closed his eyes and looked towards the camera.  They had worked out a system where Derek used an external web-cam to Skype with instead of the one built into his laptop.  Set up at an angle, a 3/4 turn away from his face, it cut down on the lens flare from his eyes, so Stiles could see him when they talked.  It worked, but wasn't ideal.  Derek couldn't smell Stiles and Stiles couldn't look Derek in the eyes, couldn't even see his whole face unless Derek closed his eyes.  
  
Turning to face the camera, Derek liked to pretend he could feel Stiles watching him, even with his eyes closed, but the truth was: he couldn't.  Because Stiles was on the other side of the United States, looking at a bunch of pixels on his laptop screen.  It was strangely nice, though, when Stiles asked him to look at the camera sometimes anyways.  Derek could tell, in those moments, that at least it wasn't just him that the distance was hard on.  The 3/4 view of his face that Stiles got most of the time was a compromise.  Stiles didn't like it when people didn't look at him when he talked, it made him feel ignored.  Derek wasn't the only one with baggage.  
  
"Derek, it's fine.  I'm wearing the t-shit; I smell so much like you it's gross.  Nobody wants to get within ten feet of me I'm so rank.  It's okay.  I am not freaked out by your weird wolfy behavior.  This is all totally fine."  
  
Stiles continued to talk Derek down from his minor anxiety spiral until Derek relaxed enough to sit back, opening his eyes and turning to look at Stiles' image on his computer screen again.  He sighed, scratching at an eyebrow with his thumb.  "Sorry.  Not being able to smell you is..."  He sighed again, "complicated."  
  
"Yeah, no shit, what gives?  I thought you would like me wearing your shirt."  
  
"I do.  I like it a lot."  
  
"So...?"  Stiles tilted his head in confusion.  
  
"I like it."  Derek raised his eyebrows, trying to add significance to the words.  "I really like it.  A lot."  
  
"Oh?  Oh..."  Stiles broke out into a smug smile for half a second, then frowned again, still confused.  "Wait, but... then.  What?"  
  
Derek could feel himself turning red.  "I could see it, but I couldn't..."  He gestured at the webcam and then vaguely at himself.  "It's disorienting, not being able to smell you, or hear you.  I can't... It's... it confuses everything."  
  
Stiles leaned his elbow on his desk and rested his chin in his hand.  "Sorry, Daddywolf.  You sure it's not worth it for me to invest in some better hardware?  I know I can get a better mic, at least."  
  
Derek grimaced.  "Hard no on that nickname and, Stiles, there's no microphone commercially available that's going to be good enough to pick up your heartbeat without you calling me from a soundstage."  
  
"We could still try to make it a little better," Stiles suggested, half-heartedly.  They'd had this conversation more than once before.  "So, what do you want me to do with the shirt then?  Go for a run and then Fed-ex it back to you?  Or do one of my own?  You'll have to give me instructions, I'm pretty sure I could identify most of the stains, but I'm not positive.  I mean, I'm pretty sure you didn't pee on it but not bet-your-life kinda sure."  
  
Derek turned bright red and resisted the urge to bury his face in his hands.  "I did not pee on anything I have ever given you."  
  
"I'd be cool with it, if that was, like, something you needed.  It's not really my thing but, I mean, pee is pretty sterile so if it's a werewolf thing, we can work totally figure it out or whatever."  
  
"Please don't send me your pee, Stiles.  Please.  It's not a werewolf thing."  
  
"Okay.  Cool.  No pee.  That's good.  Not like I was worried, but sometimes I chew on my shirt while I sleep and I slept in this thing kinda before I thought it all the way through.  I mean, it's cool, pee is totally sterile, but um... yeah, gross.  So.  That's nice.  No pee.  Good."  
  
Stiles was so... so... so fucking sweet sometimes.  Weird, spastic, intrusive, kind of a dick, but also... sweet.  If Stiles had been anyone else, a long distance relationship would have never worked.  But Stiles didn't let shit fester.  Even from half a continent away, he'd keep pushing and asking and questioning until Derek gave him a straight answer.  For someone who had a reputation for obfuscating the truth and running from his problems, Stiles was surprisingly dogged when he couldn't figure something out.  
  
It was nice.  Even if not every problem could be solved, just having them out there, to be looked at head-on, was nice.  It was validating in a way Derek hadn't really known he needed just to have Stiles ask and, as much as Stiles teased and joked and made fun, he also always listened.  Derek would probably hear about this incident until the end of time, for instance.  That he had over-night shipped Stiles a sweaty, spunk-covered t-shirt in a fit of possessive loneliness was just too much to ever truly live down.  But Stiles had worn the t-shirt anyways, as disgusting as it probably was, and was honestly asking what he should do with it, what would make Derek feel better.  
  
"Come on, even if you did send it in a black-out haze of wolfy possessive instincts, you did send it.  So you might as well tell me what to do with it.  You know I'll get it out of you eventually."  Stiles smirked and wiggled his eyebrows.  "After all, what three things can't long be hidden?  The Sun.  The Moon.  And," he paused for effect, "The TRUTH."  
  
"Ugh."  Derek turned towards the camera in order to deliberately and dramatically roll his eyes.  
  
Stiles laughed.  "I know, I know.  Whoever thought up that little Chestnut had clearly spent most of their life under a rock.  But tell me anyway, I wanna hear all about your psycho boyfriend habits so I can start to feel a bit less weird about mine.  Did you know I only have two pictures of you?  And one of them is a mug shot.  A mug shot!  Not only do people not believe we're actually dating, they also think I suck at fabricating a fake internet boyfriend.  I would seriously have had more proof that you existed if I had made you up!  But now that you've literally sent me your dirty laundry, I am so making you take a thousand selfies with me.  We're gonna do a full photoshoot this summer, you won't even know what hit you, now tell me what to do with the damn t-shit because otherwise I am going to wash it."  
  
"Just..."  Derek shook his head, smiling and feeling warmth settle into his stomach that hadn't been there since the last time he'd talked to Stiles.  He fucking loved Stiles.  Stiles was snarky and pessimistic and had a moral compass so broken it probably didn't even have a needle.  But he was also tenacious, determined, and so fucking full of life.  He made being a train wreck seem somehow normal, like it was okay for Derek to be a mess, because what did normal even mean anyways?  "Just hold onto it.  Maybe wash it with the rest of your clothes."  
  
"Get your cooties all over the rest of my clothes, you mean.  I could sleep in it too, if you wanted.  I mean, the washing thing is definitely going to have to happen, but after that."  
  
"Yeah.  That would be nice."  
  
"You got it, Dollface."  Stiles winked.  "So, something happen this week to bring all this on?"  
  
Derek resisted the urge to run his fingers through his hair, then gave into the impulse, it was still early and he hadn't gelled it yet anyways.  "Not really.  Scott showed up to the pack meeting in one of your sweatshirts."  
  
"Dude, that can't be the first time that's happened.  I'm pretty sure half of my wardrobe has been left at Scott's place at some point."  
  
"Yeah but--" a notification binged on Stiles' computer, interrupting them.  
  
"Oh, sorry, lemme close out of this."  
  
Derek watched Stiles click around on his computer for a second.  It was nice, being able to watch him.  Stiles had grown a lot in the past few years.  He had broad shoulders now and dark brown hair that was bordering on shaggy.  It hung around his ears, framing a much sharper, harder face than he'd had in high school.  He didn't look quite so defenseless anymore, hadn't for a while, really.  But his eyes had always been bright, and his smile had always been teasing.  He was beautiful and clever and infuriating and Derek loved him so much he wanted to kiss him through the fucking computer screen.  
  
He wondered if he should say something about that, the love thing.  
  
"Okay, sorry."  Stiles looked back up into the camera.  "You were saying?  Scott wore one of my sweatshirts and...?"  
  
"He hadn't washed it first."  Saying it out loud made it all sounds stupid, which it was.  "So it still smelled like you."  
  
"You didn't go all He-Man macho-Alpha on him did you?  'Cause Scott trusts you to be in his corner and it would be seriously fucked up if you lost your shit over him smelling a little bit like me."  
  
"No."  Derek pinched the bridge of his nose in exasperation.  "It's not like that.  I didn't do anything to Scott.  He just smelled like you and I missed you and then I suddenly really really wanted you to smell like me and unless you have something else you need to say about it, can we please move on?  How was your week, Stiles?"  
  
Stiles, probably picking up on the air of desperation in Derek's voice and deciding to let him off the hook, if only for the moment, laughed and started in on a story of how he'd made friends with a guy in one of his classes.  Apparently they'd bonded over a mutual fondness for eating high-protein meals right before any lectures held in one of the underground lecture halls.  It really shouldn't have been funny, but Derek found himself in stiches by the time Stiles started in on his theories about who might or might not be a supernatural, based entirely on their sensitivity to farts in an enclosed environment.  
  
"I swear to god, Derek, I think I might have stumbled upon a perfect werewolf defense system in the form of protein shakes and baby-sized burritos."  
  
"No Stiles.  They're already invented pepper spray."  Derek said between bouts of laughter.  "Please stop eating trash and just buy a can of pepper spray."  
  
"But this is how Scott and I met!  And now Craig!  If I stopped making terrible gastronomical decisions, how would I ever make friends?"  
  
"You didn't bond with me over bad food."  
  
"Derek, I can't just go around staring at people's asses until they give me the time of day.  That's textbook sexual harassment and it only worked with you because you have, like, zero self-preservation instinct, which normally pisses me off because, seriously, if you were any less observant you'd be a rock, but it worked out in my favor this time so I'm letting it slide."  
  
"Gee, and here I was worried you only liked me for my body."  
  
"Naw, it's all about your sparkling personality, Sweetie Pie.  Oh, and speaking of your sparkling personality, did you get that thing I sent you?"  
  
Derek had to work to keep his face from breaking out into a grin.  "Oh, the George Washington mug?  Yeah, it's nice.  I'm using it right now."  He lifted his coffee mug, showing it to the camera.  
  
Stiles' face dropped minutely and Derek, once again had to bite back a smile.  "Um... yeah," Stiles floundered, "That's great.  I'm glad you like it.  Um... maybe you should, like, go grab another mug from the kitchen just so I can... see... the difference.  I tried to get you a slightly different design than your normal, umm... mug and... Scale is hard, you know, with the um... webcam."  
  
It took everything in Derek not to laugh out loud.  Stiles was not subtle to the point of absurdity.  "Sure Stiles, let me just go grab a mug out of the kitchen.  For scale."  
  
He stood up and turned around, putting his back to the camera, then paused and said, in as dry and droll a voice as physically possible, "Oh, look.  I dropped a pen," and bent forward at the waist to pick an imaginary pen up off the floor.  
  
A strangled sound came in over the speaker as Derek took his time bending all the way forward, and then all the way back up to standing, before turning around and sitting back down in his chair again.  
  
"Will that do it for you, or should I actually go get a mug from the kitchen?"  He would have liked to have winked at the camera just then, but the lens flair would have ruined the effect, so instead he just took a slow sip of coffee while Stiles, still staring at his computer screen with his mouth hanging open, collected himself on the other side of the continent.    
  
"I love you."  Stiles looked startled at the sound of his own voice and Derek almost spilled his coffee in surprise.  
  
"What?"  
  
Stiles flushed bright red and started fidgeting, waving his hands and rambling at about a thousand miles an hour.  "No, not like that.  I mean, yes like that.  You definitely have a Grade-A ass, that is no joke but, that wasn't what I meant.  Or, it was what I meant, but not like that.  Oh my god, I did not mean to say that.  This is the worst context I could possibly have come up with, I am so sorry.  That was not about the ass.  The ass is great, I fucking love the ass, but I mean: you just did a Bend-and-Snap for me.  You, Derek Hale, did a Legally Blonde Bend-and-Snap for me, Stiles Stilinski, because I'm on the other side of the continent and I fucking miss you and you probably rolled your eyes until they were almost falling out while you did it, but you still did it.  For me.  That's why I said that.  And you definitely don't have to say it back.  Oh my god, this was not part of the plan.  I can't believe I said I love you for the first time over Skype.  Please, can we just table this?  I swear--"  
  
"Stiles, calm down."  Derek cut into Stiles' verbal waterfall.  
  
"Shutting up now."  
  
It was moments like this when Derek really wished he could look Stiles in the eye.  It was hard to be reassuring from a 3/4 view.  "Do you really not want to talk about this right now?"  
  
"I really, truly do not."  
  
"Okay.  But, just know that I'm fine with it, okay?  We're fine."  
  
"Freaked out Insecure Neurotic and Emotional?  Yep.  Sounds about right."  
  
"You know what I mean."  
  
"Yeah."  Stiles let out a long slow breath and seemed to sink down into his chair.  "Sorry, this is just way too much talking about feelings for ten am on a Sunday."  
  
"Go have breakfast, do some laundry, take a nap.  You look tired, Stiles."  
  
"Eh, why nap when there's coffee?"  
  
"Don't make me worry about you."  
  
"Yeah, yeah.  I'll talk to you latter, okay?"  
  
"Talk to you later, Stiles."  
  
They rung off and Derek stared at his desktop for a second, the Skype app still open on his screen.  
  
Stiles was definitely freaking out right now, he did not like talking about emotions.  Specifically, Stiles did not like talking about emotions as they applied to him and caring about other people or other people caring about him.  There were a few exceptions, people Stiles had known since childhood that he had claimed as his own: his dad, obviously, Scott, Mrs. McCall, and Lydia.  He could say, "I love you," all day to Lydia.  Everybody knew he loved Lydia and had since the second grade.  But new people?  Forget it.  Someone would have better luck walking up to the newly rebuilt gates of Troy, ten years after the Iliad, with giant wooden horse, hoping for a warm welcome.  Saying it back right now would probably only make Stiles freak out more.  
  
Derek sighed and got to his feet.  He'd picked up a copy of the Sunday paper while he was out on his morning run and went to get it from the kitchen.  After a moment of thought, he grabbed a thick permanent pen off the counter as well and scribbled a note across the front of the newspaper, circling the date.  Holding it up to his face, looking to the side to cut down on the glare from his eyes, he snapped a photo.  
  
It was awful.  The lighting was bad and trying to work his phone, hold up the paper, and look away from the camera lens all at the same time had made him look slightly constipated.  He sent it off to Stiles anyways with the text:  
  
_Now you have proof that I'm your boyfriend._  
  
The response came barely half a second later.  
  
**_Oh my god. did u just send me a ransom photo?_**  
**_that looks like a ransom photo._**  
**_most people would have updated their facebook status instead of sending a ransom photo.  oh wait, except you DONT HAVE A FACEBOOK._**  
  
_I'm not getting a facebook.  You said you wanted a picture to prove I'm your boyfriend, so here you go. There's even the date._  
  
**_YOU SCRIBBLED "I AM DATING STILES STILINSKI" ON A NEWSPAPER AND HELD IT UP TO YOUR FACE._**  
**_IT LOOKS LIKE SOMEBODY'S HOLDING A GUN TO UR HEAD._**  
**_U ARE THE WORST_**  
  
_but u love me anyways_  
  
There was an unusually long pause.  Then:  
  
**_I'm telling everyone that you sent me your dirty laundry in the mail._**  
  
_I love you too_


End file.
